Political Advertising.  All political advertising must identify the sponsor of the advertisement. Political advertisements undertaken as independent expenditures or which are distributed within 60 days of an election must also disclose the five persons or entities making the largest aggregate contributions to the advertisement's sponsor of at least $1,000, and the top three individual contributors to any of the top five donors which are political or incidental committees.

A person cannot sponsor, with actual malice, a defamatory statement in political advertising that:

• contains a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office;
• falsely represents that a candidate is an incumbent for the office sought; or
• falsely indicates that a candidate has the support or endorsement of an organization.

Synthetic Media.  Advances in machine learning led to the development of technology where a person in an existing image or video is replaced with another person's likeness, and techniques to generate new synthetic audio of a person's speech based on past recordings of the person.  Media created through machine learning to falsely depict a person's speech or conduct are known as synthetic media or deepfakes. 

Use of Synthetic Media.  Synthetic media is defined as an image or audio or video recording of a person's appearance, speech, or conduct, that has been manipulated to create a realistic or false image, audio, or video that:

• would appear to a reasonable person of a real individual, but did not occur in reality; and
• would cause a reasonable person to have a fundamentally different understanding of the content of the media than of the unaltered media.

An electioneering communication which contains synthetic media may not be distributed without a disclosure.  The disclosure must state that the media has been manipulated and:

• for visual media, be printed in at least the largest font size of other text in the media or a size easily readable for the average viewer;
• for video media, appear for the duration of the video; and
• for audio media, be read in a clearly spoken manner and a pitch easily heard by the average listener at the beginning and end of the audio, and at least every two minutes during the audio, if applicable.

Private Cause of Action.  A candidate whose voice or likeness appears in synthetic media distributed without the required disclosure within 60 days of an election may seek to enjoin distribution of the media and bring an action for general or special damages against the party distributing the media.  Prevailing parties may be awarded attorneys' fees and costs.  The plaintiff must establish a violation of the disclosure requirement by clear and convincing evidence.  Actions filed under the act take precedence over other cases and must be speedily heard and resolved.  Any broadcaster or other medium is not liable for damages unless it alters the content of the advertisement.

Other Provisions.  The bill contains a severability clause.

Private Cause of Action.  A candidate need not demonstrate actual malice to receive an injunction against the use of synthetic media without a disclosure in an electioneering communication.

The committee recommended a different version of the bill than what was heard.  PRO:  Overseas and domestic actors seek to spread misinformation.  As technology evolves, bad actors have adapted their tactics.  Last March, when Russia invaded Ukraine, deepfakes circulated of the Ukrainian president ordering his troops to lay down their weapons, causing mass confusion during a critical time for the country.  We must be vigilant and secure our elections before this becomes an issue in Washington State.  This will not infringe on freedom of speech.

OTHER:  It will be helpful for the PDC to have rulemaking authority to clarify any terminology issues that arise.  The PDC is concerned that this bill may regulate the content of speech, which courts have treated skeptically.